Alternative First Name Search

To determine what the impact would have been had we included alternative first names in our original think tank study search, we ran a check for those scholars with common nicknames (i.e., Jeff vs. Jeffrey or Nick vs. Nicholas). For practical reasons, we did this for the top fifty-four most cited economists (i.e., those from rank one through those tied for fiftieth place, accounting for over 70% of total cites). The intention of this robustness check was to ensure that our original search, which utilized only a scholar's first name as cited on his or her home institution's website, did not grossly undercount any individual.

First, we ran a separate search for each alternative first name (i.e., Bill, Will and William separately) and then a collective search with all alternative first names (Bill or Will or William) for all appropriate scholars. As in our original survey, this search looked for the first name "within 3" of last name and mention of the home institution format: the search was for the five-year total from 1997-2002 in the 11 selected publications. Second, we compared each scholar's total cites with and without alternative first names to compute the difference that first name variations made on a scholar's total and therefore overall individual rank. Lastly, we recalculated the think tanks' collective totals with the extra cites to determine whether this would have any impact on the overall think tank rankings.

In general, the alternative first name robustness check re-confirmed our original findings. (For complete set of results with alternative first names, click here.) Only four individuals suffered significant undercounting in our primary search. These were: Daniel Mitchell (61 vs. 42 cites; #20 vs. #30), Robert Greenstein (84 vs. 71 cites; #13 vs. #14), William Gale (82 vs. 75 cites; #14 vs. #13) and Edwin Feulner (56 vs. 49 cites; #22 vs. #24). While their respective think tanks' totals would be slightly increased as a result, this alternative method did not change the overall think tank rankings. We view this as a confirmation of the robustness of our main results, which admittedly were always the result of a sampling exercise (see Methodology).

Alternative First Name Charts [pdf] >>

Raw Data Individual [Alternative First Names]:

American Enterprise Institute [pdf]
The Brookings Institution [pdf]
The Cato Institute [pdf]
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities [pdf]
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [pdf]
The Center for Strategic and International Studies [pdf]
Council on Foreign Relations [pdf]
The Economic Policy Institute [pdf]
The Economic Strategy Institute [pdf]
The Heritage Foundation [pdf]
The Hoover Institution [pdf]
The Hudson Institute [pdf]
The Institute for International Economics [pdf]
The National Center on Policy Analysis [pdf]
The Progressive Policy Institute [pdf]
The Urban Institute [pdf]